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THE  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 


The  Social  Criticism  of 
Literature 


BY 

GERTRUDE  BUCK,   Ph.D. 

Professor  of  English  in  Vassar  College 


New  Haven:    Yale  University  Press 

London:    Humphrey  Milford 

Oxford  University  Press 

MDCCCCXVI 


Copyright,  1916,  by 
A'ale  University  Press 


First  published,  October,  1916 


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PREFACE 

The  social  criticism  of  literature  has,  no  doubt, 
been  practiced  more  widely  than  it  has  been  recog- 
nized as  a  theory.  With  the  more  or  less  uncon- 
scious practice  of  such  criticism,  however,  this  book 
does  not  attempt  to  deal.  It  is  concerned  solely 
with  the  explicit  theory  of  social  criticism  and  with 
the  development  of  the  conception  of  literature 
underlying  it,  which  has  "come  to  consciousness" 
either  partially  or  wholly  in  various  writers  about 
literature,  since  the  time  of  Plato.  Some  of  these 
writers  have  been  noted  in  the  following  pages,  but 
only  such  as  seem  best  calculated  to  illustrate  the 
conception  or  some  phase  of  its  development.  A 
complete  history  of  the  genesis  and  evolution  of  the 
social  theory  of  literature  remains  to  be  written, 
when  the  theory  itself  is  more  fully  understood.  As 
a  contribution  towards  its  fuller  understanding, 
this  little  book  is  offered.  Its  purpose  will  be 
achieved,  if  it  shall  succeed  in  clearing  the  ground 
for  further  study  of  the  social  theory  of  literature, 
by  presenting  its  relations  to  other  critical  theories 
and  defining  certain  of  its  more  obvious  implica- 
tions, both  speculative  and  practical. 

Grateful  acknowledgment  of  my  indebtedness 
for  light  upon  this  subject  is  due  to  Professor 
Fred  Newton  Scott,  of  the  University  of  Michigan, 


4S7U20 


vi  PEE  FACE 

whose  courses,  more  than  twenty  years  ago, 
explicitly  recognized  the  social  significance  of 
literature  and  inspired  his  students  to  further 
investigation  of  this  significance ;  to  Professor 
Laura  Johnson  Wylie,  under  whose  leadership 
every  course  in  English  at  Vassar  College  is  ani- 
mated by  the  social  conception  of  literature ;  to 
Professor  John  Dewey,  of  Columbia  University, 
whose  philosophy  of  society  has  directed  all  my 
thinking  about  literature ;  and,  finally,  to  my  stu- 
dents in  Literary  Criticism,  who  for  many  years, 
attacking  its  problems  with  me,  have  stimulated 
and  clarified  my  understanding  of  them. 

G.  B. 
Vassar  College,  September  18,  1916. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface v 

Chapter       I     The  Muddle  of  Criticism     .      .  1 

Chapter     II     The  Larger  Criticism     ...  16 

Chapter    III     The  Standards  of  Criticism      .  33 

Chapter    IV     The  Function  of  the  Critic       .  47 


THE  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  MUDDLE  OF  CRITICISM 

By  simple  folk  in  every  age  literary  criticism 
has  been  accounted  only  a  more  pretentious  name 
for  finding  fault  with  what  one  reads.  All 
authorities,  past  and  present,  agree  in  ruling  out 
of  court  this  untutored  definition;  but  when  an 
accredited  substitute  for  it  is  demanded,  the  hith- 
erto unanimous  voice  of  critical  doctrine  breaks 
into  a  jangle  of  dissonant  statements.  The  flippant 
will  have  it  that  criticism  consists  chiefly  in  anec- 
dotes concerning  Johnson's  tea  and  the  love-affairs 
of  Shelley.  By  no  means,  protest  the  philological. 
Rather  is  it  the  textual  emendation  of  Chaucer. 
It  is  nothing,  urges  the  old-fashioned  scholar,  if 
it  be  not  the  principles  of  poetry  delivered  unto  us 
by  Aristotle.  No  doubt,  asserts  the  pedagogue, 
criticism  is  the  English  teacher's  use  of  red  ink  on 
a  pupil's  theme.  The  historian  of  literature  finds 
his  conception  of  criticism  exemplified  in  Gilbert 
Murray's  study  of  the  folk-lore  connected  with  the 
plot  of  Hamlet;  the  apostle  of  "general  culture," 
in  Arnold's  cryptic  enthusiasms  over  a  passage 
from  Homer  or  Dante. 

"Which  of  these  diverse  meanings  is  the  bewil- 
dered reader  to  affix  to  the  term  "criticism"  when 


2  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

it  meets  his  eye  in  some  literary  essay  ?  The  writer 
may  have  had  in  mind  any  one  of  the  foregoing 
conceptions  of  the  term,  or  any  one  of  a  dozen 
others.  Only  the  hard-worked  context  could  pos- 
sibly determine  which,  unless,  indeed,  a  saving 
adjective  has  been  prefixed  to  the  general  term. 
Accordingly  such  adjectives  have  been  called  to 
the  rescue,  and  we  read  of  scientific,  and  of  histori- 
cal literary  criticism,  of  criticism  deductive  and 
inductive,  comparative,  appreciative,  impression- 
istic, aesthetic  and  social.^  But  even  these  appar- 
entl}^  definite  terms  refuse  to  yield  immediate 
enlightenment.  Mr.  George  Saintsbury,  himself  a 
distinguished  advocate  and  exemplar  of  compara- 
tive criticism,  protests,  almost  with  tears,  that 
while  he  has  "gravely  and  strenuously  endeavored 
to  ascertain  from  the  writings  both  of  foreign 
critics  .  .  .  and  of  their  disciples  at  home,  what 
'scientific'  criticism  means,"  in  no  case  has  he 
"been  able  to  obtain  any  clear  conception  of  its 
connotation  in  the  mouths  or  minds  of  those  who 
use  the  phrase. ' '  ^ 

The  case  is  not,  however,  for  most  of  us,  quite  so 
hopeless  as  this.  The  fundamental  distinction 
between   judicial   or    deductive    and   scientific    or 

1  Mr.  R.  G.  Moulton,  who  gave  currency  to  the  term 
"inductive  criticism,"  has  also  added  "speculative  criti- 
cism ' '  to  our  nomenclature.  See  ch.  x  in  his  Modern 
Study  of  Literature. 

2  Essays  in  English  Literature,  1780-1860,  pp.  xi-xii. 


THE  MUDDLE  OF  CRITICISM  3 

inductive  criticism  has  long  since  been  broadly 
established  on  the  lines  suggested  by  their  respec- 
tive names,  the  former  basing  itself  on  accepted 
principles,  the  latter  on  tested  facts.  Deductive 
criticism,  we  are  invariably  told,  both  by  its  parti- 
sans and  by  its  assailants,  stands  firmly  upon  some 
accredited  canon  of  literature,  such  as,  to  take  an 
extreme  instance,  the  "three  unities"  of  drama. 
Applying  this  canon  to,  say,  The  Two  Gentlemen 
of  Verona,  a  critic  of  the  deductive  school  must 
conclude  that  the  construction  of  this  play  is 
faulty.  Inductive,  historical  or  scientific  criti- 
cism, on  the  contrary,  turning  its  back  upon  all 
accepted  principles,  sets  out  to  discover  cer- 
tain facts  about  this  same  play, — such  facts,  for 
instance,  as  its  probable  date,  different  printings 
and  performances,  changes  in  the  text,  the  sources 
of  various  elements  in  the  plot.  These  facts  must 
often  lead  to  certain  inferences,  but  not,  it  must 
be  noted,  inferences  as  to  the  value  of  the  play. 
Scientific  criticism,  in  its  furthest  recoil  from 
judicial  criticism,  would  confine  itself  to  account- 
ing for  a  given  piece  of  literature,  steadfastly 
refusing  to  evaluate  it.  In  so  doing  it  explicitly 
challenges  the  claim  of  judicial  criticism  that  the 
literature  of  past  ages,  from  which  the  latter 's 
standards  are  necessarily  drawn,  should  fix  values 
for  the  literature  of  the  present  and  of  the  future ; 
and  sets  up  a  conception  of  literature  as  per- 
petually  growing    and    changing,    a    creature    of 


4  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

organic  development,  not  of  fixed,  inorganic 
structure. 

Out  of  such  a  conception,  however,  logically 
arises  a  new  standard  of  judgment  for  particular 
pieces  of  literature.  Those  scientific  critics  who, 
like  ]\I.  Brunetiere,  insist  that  the  judgment 
of  a  work  of  art  is  an  essential  part  of  the  pro- 
cess of  criticism,  imply,  as  a  basis  for  this  judg- 
ment, the  accurate  ' '  placing ' '  of  the  piece  of  litera- 
ture in  question  in  the  development  of  a  particular 
type  or  period.  The  ultimate  question  for  such 
criticism  is  not :  ' '  Does  this  play  follow  the 
accredited  literary  traditions?"  but  "How  does 
it  further  the  obser\' ed  development  of  literature  ? ' ' 

This  observed  development  of  literature,  more- 
over, gives  rise  to  a  new  conception  of  the  laws  of 
literature,  which  scientific  criticism  recognizes  not 
as  laws  in  the  legal,  mandatory  sense  of  the  word, 
but  rather  as  "statements  of  the  habits"^  of  ballads 
and  essays,  declaring  not  what  ought  to  be,  but 
what  is.  On  these  points,  then, — namely,  the  right 
starting  point  for  the  critical  process,  its  proper 
method  and  conclusions,  its  underlying  concep- 
tions of  the  nature  and  the  laws  of  literature, — 
scientific  criticism  stands,  broadly  speaking,  in 
point-blank  opposition  to  judicial  criticism. 

Comparative  criticism  is  essentially  scientific  in 
its  appeal  to  a  wide  reading  of  related  literature 

3  R.  G.  Moulton,  Shakespeare  as  a  Dramatic  Artist,  p.  33. 


THE  MUDDLE  OF  CEITICISM  5 

rather  than  to  a  single  accredited  model  or  prin- 
ciple. Yet  Mr.  George  Saintsbury's  exposition* 
stresses  its  deductive  affiliations,  not  merely  in 
holding  judgment  of  values  to  be  a  primary  con- 
cern of  the  critic  of  literature  (for,  as  we  have 
seen,  some  scientific  critics  also  profess  this  faith), 
but  in  making  value  apparently  synonymous  with 
conformity  to  accepted  classic  standards  rather 
than  with  the  furthering  of  literarj^  evolution. 

In  this  merry  war  of  critical  theories,  the  pro- 
tagonists of  scientific  criticism,  though  largely  out- 
numbering the  defenders  of  the  earlier  faith,  have 
not  held  the  field  unassailed.  Mr.  Irving  Babbitt, 
in  an  article  entitled  Impressionist  versus  Judi- 
cial Criticism,"  having  roughly  classified  as  either 
impressionistic  or  scientific  "nearly  all  recent 
criticism,  so  far  as  it  is  anything  more  than 
a  form  of  gossip  and  small  talk,"  asserts  that 
neither  of  these  types  afifords,  as  does  judicial 
criticism,  "any  real  means  of  escape  from  the 
quicksands  of  relativity  to  some  firm  ground  of 
judgment."  He  neatly  discriminates  the  types 
arraigned  by  declaring  that  for  Taine,  the  scien- 
tific critic,  a  poem  is  the  result  of  certain  "prosaic 
facts  of  environment,"  while  to  the  impressionist 
critic  it  is  rather  a  cause  of  his  own  sensations. 
Impressionist  criticism  has  no  more  concern  with 

4  Essays  in  English  Literature,  1780-1860,  p.  xxvi. 
^Publications  of  the  Modern  Langxiage  Association,  1906. 


6  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

the  process  by  which  a  book  came  into  being  than 
it  has  -with,  a  judgment  of  the  book's  value.  It 
only  revels  in  the  unanalyzed  effect  produced  by 
the  book.  "When  this  effect  is  expressed  in  words 
for  the  benefit  of  other  readers,  we  have  a  mere 
report  of  the  critic's  personal  reactions  to  a  work 
of  literary  art,  a  recital,  in  the  overquoted  phrase 
of  M.  Anatole  France,  of  "les  aventures  de  son 
ame  au  milieu  des  chef s-d  'oeuvre. ' ' "  This  recital 
may  or  may  not  be  interesting  reading ;  but  neither 
it  nor  the  report  of  the  scientific  critic  can  have 
any  value  as  criticism,  since  neither  affords  any 
sure  test  of  the  quality  of  a  given  piece  of  writing. 
The  scientific  critic,  declares  Mr.  Babbitt,  fixes  our 
attention  "on  precisely  those  features  of  a  poem 
that  are  least  poetical.  The  very  prosaic  facts  he 
is  looking  for  would  be  at  least  as  visible  in  the 
writing  of  some  mediocrity  as  in  a  work  of  the 
first  order."  Or,  as  Miss  Ethel  Puffer  more 
picturesquely  puts  it,  "the  psychological  process 
in  the  development  of  a  dramatic  idea  .  .  .  is,  .  .  . 
from  the  point  of  view  of  such  analysis,  exactly 
the  same  for  a  Shakespeare  and  for  the  Hoyt  of 
our  American  farces. ' '  ^ 

And,  as  for  impressionist  criticism,  Mr.  Babbitt 
is  quite  sure  that  a  ' '  third-rate  bit  of  contemporary 
sentimentality  will  'suggest'  more  ineffable  dreams 

«  La  Vie  Litteraire,  1  serie,  p.  iii. 
7  The  Psychology  of  Beauty,  p.  17. 


THE  MUDDLE  OF  CRITICISM  7 

to  the  young  woman  in  the  long  chair  than  a  play 
of  Sophocles,"  and  therefore  must,  by  the  prem- 
ises of  impressionistic  criticism,  be  ranked  as  the 
better  literature !  Even  the  appreciative  critic, 
most  closely  associated  with  the  impressionist,  has 
opened  fire  upon  his  shifting  scale  of  values.  "Can 
criticism,"  asks  Mr.  Lewis  E.  Gates,  with  portent- 
ous courtesy,  "properly  confine  itself  to  the  record 
of  a  momentary  shiver  across  a  single  set  of 
possibly  degenerate  nerves  ? "  ^ 

The  alleged  assumptions  of  impressionist  criti- 
cism that  the  critic's  reactions  to  a  piece  of  litera- 
ture are  more  important  than  the  writer's  process, 
and  that  these  reactions  are  important  as  being 
individual,  rather  than  as  being  typical  or  repre- 
sentative, have  been  repeatedly  brought  to  light 
by  its  opponents  and  set  up  as  a  plain  target  for 
ridicule.  By  its  partisans  they  have,  however, 
been  as  often  disclaimed.  The  critic's  reactions 
need  not,  they  assert,  be  held  more  important  than 
the  writer's  process  in  order  to  justify  any  presen- 
tation of  them,  nor  does  the  critic  of  necessity 
regard  his  reactions  as  of  importance  primarily 
because  they  are  his.  A  sensitive  and  cultivated 
mind,  however  rare,  is  not  unique;  and  the  record 
of  its  responses  to  any  work  of  art  must  have  value 
as  the  revelation  of  what  this  work  of  art  may 

8  Impressionism  and  Appreciation,  The  Atlantic  Monthly, 
July,  1900, 


8  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

mean  to  other  minds  in  some  degree  capable  of 
appreciating  it. 

The  charge  of  relativity  of  judgment  has  never 
been  disproved,  because  it  could  not  be ;  but  it  is 
set  aside  by  the  fundamental  conception  of  impres- 
sionist criticism,  which  it  shares  with  the  more  radi- 
cal body  of  scientific  criticism,  namely,  that  judg- 
ment of  values  in  literature  is  no  part  of  the  criti- 
cal process.  Naturally  this  view  is  sustained  by 
"appreciative  criticism,"  which,  as  defined  by  Mr. 
Gates,  seems  to  blend  scientific  and  impressionist 
criticism  in  the  fuller,  deeper  experience  of  appre- 
ciation. To  appreciate  a  work  of  art,  the  critic 
must  have  regard  to  its  historical  setting  and  its 
psychological  origin ;  but  we  note  that  his  aim  in 
so  doing  "is  primarily  not  to  explain  (with  the 
scientific  critic)  and  not  to  judge  or  to  dogmatize 
(as  does  the  judicial  critic)  but  to  enjoy;  to  realize 
the  manifold  charms  the  work  of  art  has  gathered 
unto  itself  from  all  sources  and  to  interpret  this 
charm  imaginatively  to  the  men  of  his  owti  day  and 
generation. ' '  ^ 

This   statement   suggests   a   sentence    from    the 
preface  by  Messrs.  Gayley  and  Scott  to  their  inval- 
uable  bibliography  of  literary   criticism  :   ' '  There 
./  are  degrees  of  enjoyment,  the  highest  of  which  is 

criticism;  as  there  are  of  creation,  the  highest  of 

^  Impressiojiism  and  Appreciation,  The  Atlaiitic  Monthly, 
July,  1900. 


THE  MUDDLE  OF  CRITICISM  9 

which  is  art.''  ^'-  And  such  a  conception  seems  to 
promise  at  once  a  freer  and  a  richer  development 
of  the  critical  process  than  either  facile  impres- 
sionism or  laborious  fact-grubbing,  taken  each  by 
itself. 

]\Iiss  Puffer,  however,  finds  even  this  larger 
notion  of  criticism  incomplete/^  It  still  lacks,  as 
do  its  component  elements,  impressionist  and  scien- 
tific criticism,  any  standard  of  judgment.  Through 
exact  knowledge  of  the  time,  the  writer,  the  lan- 
guage, other  languages  and  literatures,  one  may  re- 
produce mentally  the  process  by  which  a  work  of 
art  comes  into  being,  yet  have  no  idea  whether  it  is 
beautiful  or  ugly  or  merely  commonplace.  One  may 
enjoy  a  work  of  art  without  ever  knowing  "whence 
and  why ' '  its  charm,  be  moved  by  it  without  under- 
standing whether  or  to  what  degree  one  ought  to 
be  moved  by  it.  There  is  need  of  a  type  of  criti- 
cism, latterly  styled  "festhetic, "  a  criticism  which, 
disregarding  the  writer's  end  of  the  literary  pro- 
cess, shall  devote  itself  to  explaining  the  effects 
produced  by  the  play  or  poem  upon  the  reader,  and 
evaluating  these  effects  by  reference  to  established 
aesthetic  laws. 

This  type  of  criticism,  though  newly  named,  is 
as  old  as  Aristotle.  The  ancient  critics,  however 
inadequately  from  the  modern  point  of  view  they 

10  Methods  and  Materials  of  Literary  Criticism,  p.  iv. 

11  The  Psychology  of  Beauty,  ch.  i. 


10  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

were  furnished  for  such  inquiry,  had  a  lively 
curiosity  about  the  nature  and  cause  of  effects 
produced  upon  the  reader  by  certain  types  of 
literature  and  certain  "devices"  of  style.  In  fact 
the  sophistic  rhetoricians  as  represented  in  Plato's 
Dialogues  and  as  followed  too  sedulously  by  Aris- 
totle, tended  to  reduce  the  theory  of  discourse 
altogether  to  analyses  of  the  means  employed  by 
the  orator  to  bring  about  certain  desired  reactions 
in  the  hearer.  Although  ostensibly  aiming  to  form 
the  effective  orator,  they  were  actually  so  pre- 
occupied with  the  auditor's  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings that  what  the  speaker  thought  and  felt  was 
largely  left  out  of  their  account.  In  the  Poetics, 
Aristotle,  with  no  science  of  aesthetics  at  command, 
but  with  an  unequalled  power  of  using  his  self- 
made  analytic  instruments,  essayed  to  discriminate 
and  explain  the  peculiar  effect  upon  the  reader  of 
tragedy,  of  metaphor,  of  "prose  poetry"  and  of 
other  phenomena  of  literature.  Longinus,  Cicero, 
Horace,  Quintilian,  Hegel,  Lessing,  Burke,  Frey- 
tag,  and  many  other  critics  have  investigated  simi- 
lar phenomena  to  the  end  of  accounting  for  the 
reader's  reactions  and  disclosing  the  laws  involved. 
But  a  new  reading  of  aesthetic  criticism  has  been 
called  forth  by  the  development  of  modern  aesthetic 
theory,  which,  even  in  its  beginning,  gives  us 
glimpses  of  possible  explanations  at  variance  with 
those  offered  by  the  literary  critics  of  two  hundred 
or  even  fifty  years  ago.    When  Cicero  tells  us  that 


THE  MUDDLE  OF  CRITICISM  11 

metaphor  gives  pleasure  because  it  "is  directed 
immediately  to  our  senses  and  principally  to  the 
sense  of  sight, "  ^^  we  find  the  reason  inadequate. 
Nor  can  Burke's  assertion  that  we  enjoy  tragedy 
because  "we  have  a  degree  of  delight,  and  that  no 
small  one,  in  the  real  misfortunes  and  pains  of 
others, ' '  ^^  bring  conviction.  In  recent  years,  how- 
ever, Miss  Puffer's  own  dealings  with  The  Emo- 
tions of  the  Drama  and  The  Beauty  of  Literature, 
M.  Bergson's  chapters  on  The  Comic  in  Situations 
and  in  Words  and  The  Comic  in  Character,  Miss 
Elizabeth  Kemper  Adams's  The  Esthetic  3Ioment, 
Mr.  Fred  N.  Scott's  The  Fundamental  Differen- 
tia of  Poetry  and  Prose  and  The  Scansion  of 
Prose  Rhythm,  offer,  for  certain  aspects  or  types 
of  literature,  explanations  and  standards  of  valua- 
tion which  modem  psychology  and  aesthetics  have 
not  yet  rendered  obsolete. 

-3i]sthetic  criticism,  then,  as  the  latest  claimant  to 
the  title  of  the  one  true  criticism,  stands,  like  all 
the  others,  in  an  attitude  of  opposition  to  every 
other  type.  Scientific  criticism,  as  we  have  seen, 
condemns  judicial  criticism  for  judging  literature 
solely  by  its  conformity  with  accepted  models  or 
canons;  and  accuses  it  of  blocking  the  progress  of 
literature  by  this  procedure.  Judicial  criticism,  on 
the  other  hand,  distrusts  scientific  criticism  because 

12  Be  Oraiore,  book  iii,  ch.  XL. 

13  On  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful,  part  l,  section  xiv. 


12  SOCIAL  CEITICISM  OF  LITERATUEE 

it  offers  no  fixed,  external  standards  of  judgment. 
Impressionist  criticism  holds  both  scientific  and 
judicial  criticism  to  be  irrelevant  to  the  one  essen- 
tial question :  How  does  this  piece  of  literature 
affect  me,  the  reader  ?  Scientific  and  judicial  criti- 
cism, in  their  turn,  ridicule  impressionist  criticism 
as  superficial  and  egoistic.  Appreciative  criticism 
will  accept  the  aid  of  scientific  and  of  impressionist 
criticism,  but  sees  both  as  inadequate  to  reach  the 
final  end  of  criticism,  namely,  the  full  experiencing 
of  a  piece  of  literature ;  while  it  finds  judicial  criti- 
cism incapable  of  even  starting  in  the  direction  of 
this  goal.  Esthetic  criticism,  rejecting  all  previous 
types,  except  deductive  criticism,  on  the  ground 
that  they  furnish  no  sure  standard  of  judgment, 
discredits  deductive  criticism  also,  by  the  familiar 
declaration  that  it  has  only  a  traditional  basis  for 
its  conclusions. 

We  have,  thus,  in  the  field  of  critical  theory,  at 
least  six  warring  conceptions  of  what  criticism 
really  is.  And  to  this  confusion  we  must  add  the 
prevalent  uncertainty  as  to  whether  criticism  is 
an  act  (the  act  of  judging  or  investigating  or 
appreciating,  or  what-not),  or  whether  it  is  rather 
the  written  product  of  this  act  (Pater's  essay  on 
Coleridge  or  Freytag's  Technique  of  the  Drama). 
These  last  illustrations,  moreover,  suggest  still 
another  source  of  confusion,  which  Mr.  Saintsbury 
recognizes  in  distinguishing  between  Aristotle's 
''criticism"  in  the  sense  of  critical  judgments  of 


THE  MUDDLE  OF  CRITICISM  13 

particular    writers    or    works,    and    his    "critical 
theory"^*  as  exemplified  in  the  Poetics}^ 

Is  it  possible  for  the  reader  of  current  criticism 
to  adjudicate  the  rival  claims  of  these  as  yet 
unreconciled,  though  not  irreconcilable,  concep- 
tions? Is  there  a  central  idea  of  criticism  under- 
lying them  all,  a  single  process  of  criticism  to 
which  each  of  the  diverse  types  is  contributory? 
If  so,  the  discovery  of  this  focal  idea  or  larger 
process  is  surely  incumbent  upon  students  of  criti- 
cal theory,"  to  whom  the  hopeless  muddle  of  critical 
conceptions  exemplified  by  Mr.  Saintsbury's  omni- 
bus definition  of  criticism  has  become  intolerable. 

Criticism  [he  propounds]  is  pretty  much 
the  same  thing  as  the  reasoned  exercise  of 
Literary  Taste — the  attempt,  by  examination 
of  literature,  to  find  out  what  it  is  that  makes 
literature  pleasant,  and  therefore  good, — the 
discovery,  classification  and,  as  far  as  possible, 
tracing  to  their  sources,  of  the  qualities  of 
poetry  and  prose,  of  style  and  metre,  the  classi- 
fication of  literary  kinds,  the  examination  and 

1*  The  History  of  Criticism,  vol.  i,  p.  35. 

15  Professor  Moulton  follows  this  distinction  {The  Modern 
Study  of  Literature,  ch.  x)  in  separating  "speculative 
criticism,  working  toward  theory  and  philosophy  of  litera- 
ture, ' '  from  ' '  inductive ' '  and  ' '  judicial ' '  criticism,  which 
aim  by  different  means  at  the  interpretation,  classification 
or  assaying  of  particular  pieces  of  literature. 


14  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

"proving,"  as  arms  are  proved,  of  literary 
means  and  weapons,  not  neglecting  the  obser- 
vation of  literary  fashions  and  the  like/® 

Such  a  heterogeneous,  unanalyzed  mass  of  activi- 
ties seems  to  have  swept  together  most  of  the  vari- 
ant conceptions  of  criticism  with  which  we  started, 
making  no  attempt  to  inquire  which  are  essential 
and  what  their  relations  to  one  another  may  be. 
Clear  thinking  demands  that  the  literary  anecdote 
and  textual  restoration  alike,  Aristotle's  theory  of 
tragedy  and  the  English  teacher's  correction  of 
faulty  grammar,  the  tracing  of  Hamlet  to  spring- 
myths  and  the  selection  of  "touch-stones  of  litera- 
ture," be  either  "placed"  in  the  one  great  activity 
of  criticism  or  definitely  excluded  from  it ;  that  the 
essential,  all-inclusive  elements  in  this  activity 
appear,  freed  from  irrelevant  and  confusing 
detail;  that  starting-point,  method  and  conclusion 
of  the  critical  process  be  adequately  distinguished 
from  one  another;  that  the  writer's  part  in  the 
production  of  literature  and  the  reader's  part  in 
appreciating  it  be  equally  taken  into  account ;  that 
the  various  types  of  criticism  be  discriminated  on 
a  functional  basis,  the  contribution  of  each  type 
to  a  larger  conception  of  criticism  rightly  under- 
stood, and  the  standards  of  literature  implied  in 
each   fully   recognized.      When    these    things    are 

16  The  History  of  Criticism,  vol.  i,  p.  4, 


THE  MUDDLE  OF  CKITICISM  15 

done,  and  only  then,  will '  *  the  muddle  of  criticism ' ' 
be  resolved  into  rational  order  and  the  long  war 
of  critical  theories  end  in  the  active  peace  of 
cooperation. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  LARGER  CRITICISM 

One  must  listen  closely  to  hear,  amid  the  jangle 
of  conflicting  theories  as  to  what  literary  criticism 
really  is,  the  still  small  voice  of  their  harmonious 
relation  to  one  another.  Once  heard,  however,  it 
cannot  be  disregarded. 

Each  type  of  criticism,  arising  to  supplement  the 
inadequacies  of  previous  types,  has  enriched  our 
conception  of  the  critical  process.  Deductive  criti- 
cism as  first  formulated  could  furnish  no  basis  for 
its  judgments  save  traditional  authority  or  the 
arbitrary  personal  taste  which  had,  though  often 
unconsciously,  been  moulded  by  it.  Recognizing 
the  need  of  a  broader  and  firmer  grounding  for  the 
critic's  conclusions,  historic  or  scientific  criticism 
offered  to  supply  such  a  grounding  in  the  thorough- 
going study  of  literary  origins  and  development. 
This  genetic  study  gave  rise  to  a  conception  of 
literature  which  proved'  of  immense  importance  to 
critical  theory.  In  so  far  as  any  writing  under 
examination  w^as  recognized  as  an  outcome  directly 
of  the  author's  individual  experience  and  training, 
indirectly  of  the  political,  social  and  industrial 
order  in  which  he  worked,  in  so  far  as  the  influence 
upon  this  writing  of  other  writings  in  many  Ian- 


THE  LAEGEE  CEITICISM  17 

guages  both  of  this  and  of  antecedent  periods  was 
taken  into  account,  just  so  far  did  literature  inevi- 
tably cease  to  be  for  criticism  a  mere  static,  rigidly 
limited  thing-iu-itself,  and  become  an  organic 
development,  rooted  deep  in  human  history  and 
complexly  interfunctioning  with  it. 

But  though  scientific  criticism,  so  to  speak, 
loosened  the  current  conception  of  literature,  and 
notably  enlarged  it  at  the  writer's  end,  a  corre- 
sponding extension  in  the  direction  of  the  reader 
took  place  only  when  impressionist  criticism 
entered  the  field.  As  a  result  of  the  attention 
which  this  type  of  criticism  directed  upon  the 
reader's  reaction  to  a  given  piece  of  literature,  the 
epic  or  drama  in  question  ceased  to  be  for  criticism 
merely  an  outgrowth  from  the  writer's  mind,  defi- 
nitely conditioned  by  various  historic,  economic 
and  literary  elements  in  his  environment,  and 
came  to  include  also  the  final  flowering  in  the 
reader's  mind  of  this  deep-rooted  growth. 

Thus  did  scientific  and  impressionist  criticism, 
each  supplementing  the  work  of  the  other,  pre- 
pare a  highway  for  appreciative  criticism,  which, 
not  content  to  occupy  merely  one  section  of  the 
great  realm  of  literature  thus  opened  to  it,  entered 
into  possession  of  the  whole.  To  the  appreciative 
critic  literature  for  the  first  time  presented  itself 
as  properly  inclusive  of  all  the  phenomena  asso- 
ciated with  it;  and  these  phenomena  were,  more- 
over,  for  the   first   time   explicitly   recognized   as 


18  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

constituting  a  continuous  activity,  comparable 
perhaps  to  that  of  an  electric  current.  Literature, 
as  thus  conceived,  might  be  generated  immediately 
in  the  writer's  consciousness  and  ultimately  in  the 
consciousness  of  his  age,  but  it  would  complete 
itself  only  as  it  passed  over  into  the  reader's  con- 
sciousness to  enlighten  or  to  stir  it  into  action. 

The  entire  literary  activity,  then,  from  writer 
to  reader,  has  been  preempted  for  criticism  by 
the  appreciative  theory.  Intensive  research  into 
its  various  stages  or  sections,  however,  belongs  to 
those  schools  whose  view  of  the  critical  field  is  more 
limited.  ^Esthetic  criticism,  for  instance,  has 
undertaken  the  closer  analysis  of  the  reader's 
reaction  according  to  modern  scientific  method; 
and  such  a  contribution  can  hardly  be  overvalued. 
Impressionist  criticism  had  done  a  needed  work  in 
turning  the  critic's  attention  to  the  reader's  end 
of  the  literary  act.  This  attention  could  not,  how- 
ever, rest  at  the  point  of  mere  unanalyzed,  personal 
impression ;  but,  continually  defining  and  univer- 
salizing every  impression  by  the  aid  of  known 
gesthetic  principles,  must  finally  evolve  a  genuine 
aesthetic  criticism. 

--Esthetic  criticism  points  us  to  the  future.  It 
constitutes,  however,  an  integral  part  of  the  con- 
tinuous development  of  critical  theory,  by  which 
a  larger  view  of  the  field  of  criticism  has  been 
progressively  gained  and  a  conception  of  literature 
suggested  which  is  at  once  inclusive  and  active. 


THE  LAEGEE  CRITICISM  19 

Each  successive  step  in  the  history  of  criticism  has 
brought  us  nearer  to  this  conception  of  literature;, 
until  to  the  modern  student,  graduate  of  all  the 
earlier  critical  schools,  a  book  consists,  not  essen- 
tially of  so  many  pages  of  printed  paper  bound 
between  covers,  but  rather  of  certain  activities, 
or,  still  more  strictly  speaking,  of  a  single,  con- 
tinuous activity.  This  activity  may,  for  purposes 
of  analysis,  be  separated  into  the  writer's  action 
and  the  reader's  reaction;  but  neither  of  these  can 
in  itself  constitute  a  book.  A  book  is,  in  philo- 
sophic terms,  the  writer's  action  transforming 
itself  into  the  reader's  reaction  at  the  point  of 
print.  And  the  printed  words  thus  reduce  them- 
selves to  a  mere  sign  of  this  transformation,  not 
constituting  literature  but  only  making  it  possible. 
Literature  as  a  social  activity  has  not  yet  com- 
pletely taken  place  when  a  book  is  printed  and 
bound.  It  fulfills  itself,  becomes  literature  in  any 
practical  sense  of  the  word,  only  in  the  act  of 
reading. 

The  act  of  reading  has  thus  taken  on  a  new 
dignity,  as  literature,  in  the  evolution  of  critical 
theories,  has  become  a  process  rather  than  a  pro- 
duct, something  that  takes  place  rather  than  some- 
thing which  has  been  made.  Literature  in  this 
sense  is  no  finished  material  object — a  pill  to  be 
swallowed  by  the  reader,  or  a  sugar-plum  to  be 
eaten  by  him.  Rather  is  it  a  great  continuous 
activity,  which  goes  on  through  and  by  the  reader, 


20  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITEKATUEE 

his  participation  constituting  its  final  stage,  as 
organically  related  to  it  as  the  writer's  function 
itself. 

Thus  defined,  however,  the  act  of  reading  sug- 
gests close  relations  with  the  act  of  criticism. 
Through  criticism,  at  least  of  the  appreciative  type, 
the  writer's  activity  is  realized  or  fulfilled,  as  it 
is  conceived  to  be  through  reading.  We  are,  it  is 
true,  accustomed  to  think  of  reading  as  one  of  the 
simplest  mental  processes,  of  criticism  as  one  of 
the  most  complex;  and,  while  admitting  that  the 
child  reads,  we  withhold  the  name  critic  from  all 
but  the  highly  trained  scholar.  But  as  the  child 
may  become  the  critic,  so  may  the  simple,  unana- 
lytic  process  of  reading  pass  by  imperceptible 
degrees  into  the  furthest  reaches  of  that  extremely 
complex  activity  called  criticism. 

The  essential  character  of  reading,  whether  ele- 
mentary or  advanced  in  its  type,  is  found  in  no 
mere  perfunctory  turning  of  leaves,  but  in  active 
participation,  however  limited  it  may  be,  in  the 
experience  which  the  writer  would  communicate. 
One  reads,  in  any  real  sense  of  the  word,  only  in 
so  far  as  he  thinks  the  writer's  thoughts  after  him 
under  the  stimulus  of  his  words,  sees  what  the 
writer  saw,  feels  what  the  writer  felt.  Hence  ' '  the 
will  to  read,"  if  one  may  paraphrase  William 
James's  title,  an  intelligent  hospitality  of  mind,  is 
the  first  condition  of  reading,  as  it  is  of  criticism. 
Lacking  this  cooperative  attitude,  the  preoccupied 


THE  LAEGER  CEITICISM  21 

schoolboy  can  no  more  read  than  the  critic,  intent 
from  the  beginning  on  fault-finding,  can  criticise ; 
while  with  it  no  limitations  of  knowledge  or  taste 
can  prevent  an  infinite  development  of  genuine 
reading  and  criticism. 

Reading  begins  the  process  of  criticism  at  the 
impressionistic  stage.  The  reader  cannot  but  be 
affected  to  some  degree  and  in  some  manner  by 
what  he  reads  and  by  some  means  (not  always 
formally  "literary")  he  is  bound  to  convey  this 
impression  to  other  persons.  It  is  true  that  only 
in  the  degree  of  his  training  and  sensitiveness  has 
the  reader's  reaction  value  for  anyone  else.  But 
this  training  and  sensitiveness  are  by  no  means 
fixed  quantities.  They  de^'^elop  in  and  through  the 
very  act  of  reading.  In  some  sense  one  must,  as 
Ruskin  says,  in  order  to  read  at  all,  ascend  to  the 
writer 's  level.  ' '  If  you  will  not  rise  to  us,  we  can- 
not stoop  to  you."^  One  must  approximate  the 
writer's  position  in  order  even  to  begin  to  read 
him,  but,  once  begun,  the  act  of  reading  itself 
discloses  its  essential  inadequacies.  The  active- 
minded  reader  finds  that,  in  order  to  think  the 
writer's  thought  after  him,  he  must,  for  a  time  in 
very  truth,  be  the  writer.  He  must  reconstruct  the 
writer's  milieu,  social,  industrial,  political,  and  the 
writer's  individual  life  as  thus  determined,  or  fail 
fully  to  apprehend  the  thought  which  grew  out 

1  (Sesame  and  Lilies:  Of  Kings'  Treasuries. 


22  SOCIAL  CEITICISM  OF  LITERATUEE 

of  and  was  modified  by  this  particular  set  of  con- 
ditions. And  he  must  furthermore  know  the 
writer's  literary  tools,  the  form  with  which  he 
worked,  its  limitations  and  its  possibilities,  how 
far  it  had  been  developed  when  he  laid  his  hand 
upon  it,  or  stop  short  of  comprehending  his  view 
of  life  as  it  shaped  itself  in  and  through  this  form. 
Here  it  is  evident  that  the  gaining  of  an  imme- 
diate impression  from  what  one  reads  has  passed 
into  the  realm  of  that  "scientific"  criticism  v,^hich 
amasses  data,  brings  to  bear  upon  the  printed  page 
all  relevant  knowledge,  historical,  linguistic,  psy- 
chological, aesthetic,  that  reading  may  be  the  more 
intelligent,  the  richer  in  content,  that  what  the 
writer  would  convey  may  the  more  perfectly  inter- 
penetrate the  reader's  mind. 

Such  interpenetration,  furthermore,  is  the  indis- 
pensable condition  of  "appreciative  criticism," 
that  complete  assimilation  of  the  epic  or  the  essay, 
with  all  its  connotations,  which  Mr.  Gates  has 
painted  for  us  in  colors  of  delight.^  And  only  such 
complete  assimilation  of  any  work  of  literature 
into  the  reader's  mind  enables  him  surely  to 
"disengage"  as  Pater  would  say,  its  peculiar 
"virtue."  Otherwise  he  is  bound  to  miss  some 
element  in  it,  some  essential  tang  or  aroma,  some 
fine  distinction  of  tone.     Thus  qualified,  however, 

2  Impressionism  and  Appreciation,  The  Atlantic  Monthly, 
July,  1900. 


THE  LAEGEE  CEITICISM  23 

his  appreciation  has  the  exquisite  precision  of  line 
which  we  associate  with  masters  of  criticism  such 
as  Pater  himself.  Like  them  our  reader  can  not 
only  reproduce  in  his  own  imaginative  experience 
the  complex  process  by  which  a  given  poem  through 
the  ages  came  to  be,  but  he  can  also  realize  in  all  its 
fullness  of  meaning  the  almost  equally  complex 
process  by  which  it  communicates  itself  to  the 
reader's  mind, — just  what  its  peculiar  individual 
effect  is  and  how  this  effect  has  been  produced.  He 
is  able,  to  quote  Miss  Puffer's  words,  descriptive 
of  "aesthetic"  criticism,  "to  tell  us  whence  and 
why  the  charm  of  a  work  of  art :  to  disengage^  to 
explain,  to  measure,  and  to  certify  it. "  ^ 

"When  he  proceeds  "to  measure  and  to  certify 
it,"  however,  he  has  passed  out  of  inductive  into 
deductive  or  "judicial"  criticism.  He  no  longer 
merely  receives,  responds,  assembles  data,  compares 
phenomena  and  investigates  laws,  but  pronounces 
upon  the  quality  of  the  work  of  literature  under 
his  hands.  He  understands  not  only  how  much 
and  why  and  in  what  respects  he  likes  it,  but  how 
and  why  and  in  what  respects  the  intelligent 
reader  ought  to  like  it.  And  in  so  doing  he  has, 
either  implicitly  or  openly,  appealed  to  certain 
laws  previously  discovered  in  the  examination  of 
individual  pieces  of  literature  or  works  of  art  in 
other  fields.     By  some  body  of  aesthetic  canons  in 

3  The  Psychology  of  Beauty,  p.  25. 


24  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITEEATURE 

general,   or  of  literary  canons  in  particular,   he 
ranks  and  evaluates. 

The  discovery  and  formulation  of  these  literary 
canons  are  a  part  of  the  process  of  criticism,  but 
not  necessarily  a  part  of  the  process  of  reading,  in 
which  theory  remains  somewhat  implicit.  That 
point  in  the  reading-act,  then,  at  which  some  theory 
about  what  is  read  emerges  into  consciousness,  may 
serve  as  the  point  of  departure  for  criticism,  in  its 
more  abstract  stages,  out  of  the  concrete  act  of 
reading.  A  further  point,  at  which  this  theory  is 
definitely  used  as  a  basis  for  judging  particular 
pieces  of  literature,  may  locate  a  boundary  line 
between  the  theoretic  and  the  judicial  aspects  of 
the  critical  process.  Thus  the  critic's  progress 
from  naive  impression  to  formulated  judgment 
seems,  roughly  speaking,  to  present  three  primary 
stages,  the  first  of  which  coincides  with  reading, 
while  the  second  and  third  ultimately  derive  from 
it.  Criticism,  as  we  have  seen,  begins  with  the 
reading  of  literature  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the 
term,  including  the  gathering  together  of  knowl- 
edge from  all  the  various  sources  which  might 
serve  to  enrich  the  understanding  of  what  is  read. 
In  this  reading  certain  theories  of  literature  and 
of  the  specific  types  of  literature  read  are  bound 
to  come  to  consciousness,  resulting  in  a  more  or 
less  formulated  body  of  laws  expressive  of  the 
modes  in  which  literature  has  its  rise  under  given 
conditions,   takes  particular   forms,   develops   and 


THE  LARGER  CRITICISM  25 

changes  these  forms  or  invents  new  ones,  acts  in 
specific  ways  upon  the  reader  and  upon  society  as 
a  whole.  And  finally,  on  the  basis  of  these  laws, 
particular  pieces  of  literature  are  judged,  ranked 
and  classified. 

In    practice    these    three   stages   of   the    critical 
process  are  not  rigidly  separated  from  one  another, 
and  our  nomenclature  still  leaves  them  undistin- 
guished.    The  critical  reading  and  interpretation.- 
of  literature  in  the  light  of  all  relevant  facts  abouv; 
it  is  criticism.     The  formulated  body  of  laws  de-/ 
rived   from   this    reading   is   criticism.      And   the\ 
ranking  of  particular  pieces  of  literature  on  the/ 
basis   of  these   discovered  laws   is   also   criticism. 
This  blanket-use  of  the  term  doubtless   tends  to 
confusion ;  and  it  seems  desirable  to  adopt  the  self- 1 
explanatory   names   ' '  critical   reading, "    "  critical  i 
theory"    and    "critical    judgment"    as    a    means  \ 
of  recognizing  three  important  stages  in  the  act 
of  criticism  without  denying  the  essential  unity  of 
the  act. 

The  logical  order  of  these  three  stages  is  appar- 
ent. The  term  "critical  reading"  must  be  applied 
not  alone  to  the  exhaustive  analyses  of  the  highly 
trained  and  sensitive  scholar,  but  to  those  simpler 
and  less  self-conscious  acts  of  mental  assimilation 
which  by  the  law  of  their  own  nature  tend  contin- 
ually to  deepen  and  enrich  themselves.  In  a  very 
sober,  literal  sense  it  may  be  asserted  that  whoever 
sincerely  reads  anything — not  perfunctorily  run- 


26  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

ning  his  eye  over  the  pages  but  actually  trans- 
forming the  writer's  experience  into  his  own — has 
thereby  started  on  the  long  path  of  criticism.  Not 
only  does  such  reading  constantly  improve  itself, 
becoming  more  exact  in  its  responses  to  the  stim- 
ulus given  by  the  writer,  better  informed  on  all 
points  which  full  reaction  to  this  stimulus  involves, 
but  eventually  it  yields  a  body  of  theory  organi- 
cally related  to  the  literature  read,  not  arbitrarily 
imposed  upon  it  by  some  external  authority. 

It  is  such  a  body  of  theory,  inductively  derived, 
which  all  the  protestants  against  deductive  literary 
criticism,  from  Coleridge  to  Mr.  J.  E.  Spingarn, 
explicitly  demand.  "We  have  done  with  all  the 
old  Rules, ' '  declares  Mr.  Spingarn  ;*  and  no  doubt 
we  have,  in  so  far  as  these  rules  have  become  purely 
arbitrary,  without  vital  connection  with  the  works 
of  literature  to  which  they  are  applied.  They  can 
have  validity  for  us  today  only  as  they  come  to 
consciousness  anew  in  our  reading  of  the  more 
diversified  body  of  literature  known  to  our  time, 
and  as  a  result  of  the  more  exact  psychological  and 
aesthetic  analysis  for  which  we  are  now  equipped. 
There  is,  of  course,  no  doubt  that  an  adequate 
theory  of  poetry,  for  instance,  would  ultimately  be 
serviceable  to  the  critical  reading  of  poetry.  This 
fact  cannot,  however,  be  allowed  to  obscure  the 
more  important  principle  that  such  a  theory,  in 

*  The  New  Criticism,  p.  20. 


THE  LAEGEE  CEITICISM  27 

order  to  be  thus  serviceable,  must  presuppose  an 
extended  reading  of  poetry  and  arise  out  of  it. 

As  for  critical  judgment,  once  apparently  the 
sole  interest  of  critics,  it  no  longer  both  begins 
and  ends  the  process  of  criticism.  Instead  of 
standing  at  the  entrance  of  the  critic's  course,  with 
an  effect  of  blocking  his  progress,  it  follows  upon  a 
prolonged  activity  of  critical  reading  and  a  ten- 
tative formulation  of  critical  theory,  so  that  it 
seems  rather  to  reward  his  labors  than  to  render 
them  unnecessary.  Built  thus  upon  human  study 
and  reasoning,  it  loses  its  oracular  quality,  its 
unquestioned  finality,  and  takes  on  the  more  useful 
aspect  of  a  conclusion  formulated  for  the  present 
on  the  basis  of  what  is  now  known,  and  serving 
merely  as  a  stepping-stone  to  some  further  knowl- 
edge or  understanding. 

Such  a  conception  of  the  process  of  criticism,  far 
less  authoritative  than  the  old,  but  compensatingly 
richer  and  more  organically  related  with  the  pro- 
cess of  literary  creation,  must  serve  as  basis  for 
classifying  the  products  of  criticism.  These,  mul- 
titudinous though  they  may  be,  readily  group 
themselves  under  the  three  headings,  critical  read- 
ing, critical  theory,  and  critical  judgment.  Of 
these  the  second  group  is  most  obviously  distin- 
guished from  the  others.  That  stage  of  the  critical 
process  in  which  theories  of  literature  come  to  con- 
sciousness leaves  behind  it  systematic  treatises  such 
as  Aristotle's  Poetics  and  Freytag's  Technique  of 


28  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

the  Drama.  Critical  reading,  having  collected  his- 
toric and  textual  data  to  its  own  ends,  may  give 
them  permanent,  though  usually  unliterary,  form 
in  annotations,  emendations,  detailed  comparisons 
and  summaries  of  evidence  upon  disputed  points. 
But  critical  reading  in  its  less  pedestrian  realms, 
and  critical  judgment  as  growing  out  of  it,  yield 
the  richest  harvests  of  critical  literature. 

"When  Matthew  Arnold  declares  that  criticism 
consists  in  "a  disinterested  endeavor  to  learn  and 
propagate  the  best  that  is  known  and  thought  in 
the  world, ' '  ^  the  verb  ' '  to  learn ' '  suggests  that 
vital  assimilative  activity  of  mind  which  we  have 
termed  "critical  reading";  while  its  correlative 
"to  propagate"  lays  hold  of  that  creative  product 
of  the  critical  process  which  Arnold's  0"\vn  literary 
1  essays  aptly  represent.  The  w^riter  who  brings  "a 
new  piece  of  literature  into  being  in  some  exqui- 
sitely happy  characterization,"  creates  "a  lyric  of 
criticism  out  of  the  unique  pleasure  of  an  aesthetic 
hour,"**  propagates  in  other  minds  "the  best  that 
is  known  and  thought  in  the  world," — merely  car- 
ries over  to  these  minds  his  o\^ti  experience  of  that 
critical  process  which  we  have  previously  analyzed. 
Implicit  or  apparent  in  many  of  the  literary  essays 
of  Arnold  we  find  all  the  salient  elements  of  the 
complete  critical  activity, — the  inquiry  after  such 

5  The  Function  of  Criticism  at  the  Present  Time. 
«  The  Psychology  of  Beauty,  p.  3. 


THE  LAEGEB  CRITICISM  29 

data  as  may  presumably  enrich  the  act  of  reading, 
the  full,  vital  interpenetration  of  the  given  book  or 
writer  with  the  critic's  mind,  the  discovery,  or  at 
least  the  re-formulation,  of  certain  laws  of  litera- 
ture, the  judgment  of  writer  or  book  on  the  basis  of 
these  laws.  Critical  literature  is,  then,  the  final 
flowering  in  a  creative  literary  act  of  the  critical 
process,  either  in  part  or  as  a  whole. 

Through  critical  literature,  critics  of  every  school 
may  contribute  to  the  common  stock  their  knowl- 
edge and  understanding  of  literature  in  any  of  its 
aspects  or  relations.  In  an  essay  on  The  Higher 
Study  of  English,  Mr.  Albert  S.  Cook  enumerates 
some  of  the  possible  activities  of  the  scholarly 
critic : 

According  to  the  exigencies  which  circum- 
stances create,  or  his  own  intuition  perceives, 
he  will  edit  dictionaries,  like  Johnson  or  Mur- 
ray; make  lexicons  to  individual  authors,  like 
Schmidt;  compile  concordances,  like  Bartlett 
or  Ellis;  investigate  metre,  like  Sievers  or 
Schipper;  edit  authors,  as  Skeat  has  edited 
Chaucer,  Child  the  English  and  Scottish  Bal- 
lads, and  Furness  Shakespeare ;  discourse  on 
the  laws  of  literature,  like  Sidney,  or  Ben 
Jonson,  or  Lewes,  or  Walter  Pater ;  write  liter- 
ary biography,  like  Brandl  or  Dowden;  or 
outline  the  features  and  progress  of  a  national 
literature,  like  Ten  Brink,  or  Stopford  Brooke, 


30  SOCIAL  CEITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

or  Taine.  .  .  .  Yet  withal  he  must  be  content, 
if  fortune,  or  his  sense  of  a  potential  universe 
hidden  in  his  apparently  insignificant  task, 
will  have  it  so,  merely  to  settle  hoti's  business, 
properly  base  oun,  or  give  us  the  doctrine  of 
the  enclitic  de — sure  that  posterity,  while  it 
may  ungratefully  forget  him,  will  at  least  have 
cause  to  bless  his  name^  as  that  of  one  without 
whose  strenuous  and  self-sacrificing  exertions 
the  poets,  the  orators,  the  historians,  and 
the  philosophers  would  have  less  completely 
yielded  up  their  meaning,  or  communicated 
their  inspiration,  to  an  expectant  and  needy 
world/ 

Plainly,  as  Mr.  Saintsbury  declares,  ' '  The  life  of 
Methuselah  and  the  mind  of  Shakespeare  together 
could  hardly  take  the  whole  of  critical  knowledge 
to  be  their  joint  province. ' '  ^  But  the  many  mem- 
bers are  one  body.  To  assign  them  relative  values 
is  not  only  an  ungracious  but  an  impossible  task. 
"If  they  were  all  one  member,  where  were  the 
body?"  Not  the  particular  section  of  the  critical 
field  which  is  tilled,  but  the  efficiency  of  its  tilling 
determines  the  critic's  value.  Every  type  of  criti- 
cal activity  is  indispensable — one  might  almost  say 
equally  indispensable — to  the  great  process  of  criti- 
cism.   But  each  type  can  reach  its  highest  effective- 

7  pp.  22-3. 

8  Essays  in  English  Literature,  1780-1860,  p.  xix. 


THE  LARGER  CRITICISM  31 

ness  toward  the  ends  of  the  process  as  a  whole  only 
in  so  far  as  it  becomes  intelligently  aware  of  these 
ends.  Sound  perception  of  w'hat  criticism  in  its 
largest  reaches  aims  to  achieve  makes  even  "hoti's 
business"  and  "the  doctrine  of  the  enclitic  de"  a 
genuine  help  to  our  reading,  instead  of  mere  aca- 
demic pottering,  redeems  impressionist  rhapsodies 
from  their  accustomed  trivial  finality  to  fruitful 
suggestiveness,  and  teaches  the  critic  of  every 
school  sincere  gratitude  to  the  many  workers  who 
in  all  ages  have  added  even  a  little  to  our  vital 
understanding  of  literature. 

Recognition  of  the  larger  whole  of  criticism  re- 
stores the  seamless  robe  which  partisanship  and 
intolerance  have  rent  in  shreds.  From  the  wars 
of  critical  theories,  each  too  limited  in  its  outlook 
to  recognize  its  cooperative  relation  with  all  the 
others,  the  modern  critic  has  emerged  with  one 
priceless  possession — a  vitalized,  democratized  con- 
ception of  literature.  To  him  a  book  can  never 
again  be  a  barren,  finished  product,  a  scholastic 
abstraction,  but  a  living  activity  of  more  than 
writer  and  reader,  a  genuine  function  of  the 
social  body.  This  inconceivably  precious  idea  he 
as  yet  hardly  knows  how  to  value  or  to  use. 
Rightly  used,  it  should  solve,  by  its  fundamental 
analysis  of  their  factors,  the  age-old,  baffling  prob- 
lems of  criticism  which  previous  partial  or  arti- 
ficial conceptions  of  literature  have  succeeded  only 
in   restating.      But    such    thoroughgoing    solution 


32  SOCIAL  CEITICISM  OF  LITEEATUEE 

awaits  a  more  complete  realization  than  has  yet 
been  generally  attained  of  the  length  and  breadth 
and  depth  and  height  of  this  epoch-making  idea. 
When  the  modern  critic  knows,  not  as  a  mere 
formula,  but  with  full  realization  of  its  as  yet 
quite  incredible  implications,  what  literature  as  a 
social  function  may  be,  the  larger  criticism  will 
also  have  become  the  deeper  criticism,  penetrating 
to  the  innermost  meaning  of  our  literature  in  its 
relations  to  our  life. 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  STANDARDS  OF  CRITICISM 

The  practice  of  criticism  has,  in  many  directions, 
profited  incalculably  by  the  long  development  of 
theories  of  criticism  throughout  the  ages  of  men's 
dealings  with  literature.  One  practical  demand 
upon  critical  theory,  however,  yet  remains  unsat- 
isfied,— the  demand  for  a  standard  of  judgment. 

The  standard  of  traditional  authority  which  de- 
ductive criticism  offers  has  been  definitely  rejected 
by  modern  critics.  All  but  universally  it  is  recog- 
nized that  such  a  standard  stultifies  both  criticism 
and  literature.  It  substitutes  a  mechanical  coer- 
cion for  the  living  interconnections  of  criticism 
with  literature,  reduces  the  critic  to  an  automaton 
while  exalting  him  to  a  despot,  and  artificializes 
literature,  by  cutting  it  off  from  organic  relation 
to  its  own  time. 

Scientific  criticism,  of  the  extreme  ''inductive" 
school,  reacts,  perhaps  immoderately,  from  this 
tyranny  of  the  ded^ictive  standard,  by  denying  to 
judgment  any  place  whatsoever  in  the  act  of  criti- 
cism. This  seems,  indeed,  to  throw  out  the  child 
with  the  bath.  It  should  not  be  necessary  to  repu- 
diate all  measures  of  value,  in  order  to  do  away 
with  those  arbitrary  and  external  standards  which 


34  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

have  no  vital  relation  with  the  writings  to  which 
they  are  applied.  ]\Iore  penetrating  thinkers,  of 
the  type  of  Coleridge,  recognize  this  fact,  and,  as 
Miss  Laura  J.  Wylie  has  pointed  out  in  her  Evolu- 
tion of  English  Criticism,^  stand  with  the  roman- 
ticists not  only  in  rejecting  standards  imposed 
from  without  upon  art,  but  also  in  conceiving  of 
the  laws  which  have  present  validity  for  literature 
as  essentially  organic,  because   derived  from  the 

'writings  in  question  rather  than  from  the  classic 
models.  Even  Coleridge,  however,  fails  to  indicate 
precisely  what  laws  or  standards  they  are  which 
may  be  thus  derived  from  the  work  of  literature 

'itself.  Nor  do  modern  critics  of  Mr.  J.  E.  Spin- 
garn's  way  of  thinking  greatly  further  our  search 
by  insisting  only  that  we  apply  to  the  writer  "no 
other  standard  than  that  applied  to  any  other  crea- 
tive artist:  what  has  he  tried  to  express,  and  how 
has  he  expressed  it. "  ^  Such  a  test  fixes  for  us 
what  Mr.  Gates  rightly  denominates  the  ' '  intended 
value"  of  a  book,  but  leaves  undetermined  its 
actual  value,  which  may  be  quite  outside  the 
writer 's  calculation. 

It  seems  plain  that  this  actual  value  cannot  be 
determined  by  standards  derived  from  the  book  re- 
garded merely  in  its  relations  to  the  writer  or  to  the 
conditions  under  which  it  was  produced,  since  the 

N  book,  considered  as  a  whole,  involves  relations  to 

1  p.  184. 

2  The  New  Criticism,  p.  28. 


THE  STANDARDS  OF  CEITICISM  35 

the  reader  as  well.  Miss  Ethel  Puffer  implies  this 
larger  view  of  literature  in  her  contention  that  the 
"placing"  of  a  book  in  the  process  of  literary  de- 
velopment, which  ^I.  Brunetiere  insists  upon  as  an 
essential  part  of  historical  or  scientific  criticism, 
does  not  necessarily  involve  any  judgment  as  to 
the  value  of  the  book;  since  "the  judgment  of 
anything  always  means  judgment  with  reference  to 
the  end  for  which  it  exists, ' '  ^  and  scientific  criti- 
cism takes  account  only  of  the  conditions  under 
which  literature  arises. 

Mr.  Saintsbury  vehemently  reproaches  scientific 
criticism  for  failing  to  supply  us  with  an  adequate 
standard  for  judging  literature,  but  he  himself 
suggests  no  such  standard,  nor  apparently  makes 
practical  use  of  any  except  the  traditional  canons. 
In  fact,  it  may  be  said  that  comparative  criticism, 
in  so  far  as  it  admits  the  conception  of  relative 
values,  determines  them  by  the  old-fashioned  rules, 
while  in  so-  far  as  it  confines  itself  to  "placing"  a 
given  piece  of  literature  in  the  process  of  literary 
development,  it  is  satisfied  with  the  partial  stand- 
ards of  scientific  criticism. 

Impressionist  criticism  cannot  fairly  be  assailed 
for  affording  us  no  basis  of  judgment,  since  it  joins 
with  some  scientific  and  most  appreciative  criti- 
cism in  denying  the  need  of  any  such  basis.  Mr. 
Gates,  however,  speaking  for  the  appreciative  critic, 

3  The  Psychology  of  Beauty,  p.  8. 


36  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

admits  that  even  "in  his  search  for  the  pleasure 
involved  in  a  work  of  art, "  he  "  finds  that  he  must 
go  outside  the  work  of  art  and  beyond  his  own 
momentary  state  of  consciousness ;  he  must  see  the 
work  of  art  in  its  relations  to  larger  and  larger 
groups  of  facts. ' '  *  And  such  an  admission  seems 
significant  not  only  because  it  decisively  rejects 
the  impressionist's  purely  personal  and  relative 
attitude  toward  literature ;  but  because  it  suggests 
the  possibility  of  seeing  a  work  of  art  "in  its  rela- 
tions to  larger  and  larger  groups  of  facts,"  until, 
at  length,  all  its  relations  are  taken  into  account 
and  an  adequate  basis  of  judgment  has  thus  been 
gained. 

Esthetic  criticism  stands  wath  deductive  criti- 
cism in  definitely  recognizing  the  obligation  of 
critical  theory  to  furnish  a  sure  test  of  values.  It 
stands  with  all  the  other  t>T)es,  however,  in  dis- 
crediting the  deductive  test.  The  esthetic  critic 
cannot  as  yet  provide  us  mth  a  usable  standard  in 
its  place;  but  Miss  Puffer  gives  us  to  understand 
that  aesthetic  theory  will  supply  our  need,  once  it 
has  fully  entered  into  its  kingdom.  The  esthetic 
critic  is  needed,  she  declares,  to  "teach  us  what 
great  art  means  in  literature,"  to  tell  us  "what  a 
novel  ought  to  be,"  so  that  "M'C  shall  not  always 
mingle  the  wheat  and  the  chaff. '  '^ 

*  Impressionism  and  Appreciation,  The  Atlantic  Monthly, 
July,  1900. 

5  The  PsycJwlogy  of  Beauty,  pp.  25-6. 


THE  STAND AKDS  OF  CEITICISM  37 

This  is  the  fairest  promise  we  have  had,  and  we 
may,  I  think,  trust  it,  so  far  as  the  province  of 
aesthetics  covers  the  field  of  literature.  Under- 
stood broadly  the  term  aesthetics  might  include  even 
those  subtler  intellectual  and  spiritual  reverbera- 
tions in  the  reader  which  Mr.  Gates  insists  on 
taking  into  account.  No  scientific  methods  as  yet 
devised,  or  in  immediate  prospect,  can,  it  is  true, 
measure  them.  But  this  is  not  to  say  that  such 
measurement  is  inherently  and  ultimately  impos- 
sible. 

]\Iodern  criticism  stands  ready  to  welcome  any 
achievement  in  this  direction.  But  meanwhile  it 
must  make  sure  that  the  larger  conception  of  litera- 
ture is  not  reduced  to  such  a  conception  as  our 
present  ffisthetie  science  is  qualified  to  deal  with, — 
the  conception  (shall  we  say?)  of  literature  as 
some  piece  of  verbal  apparatus,  cleverly  designed 
to  produce  certain  reactions  in  the  reader.  This 
would  be  to  renounce  the  spacious  territory  won 
by  criticism  through  many  generations,  to  drop  out 
of  account  the  writer's  end  of  the  literary  process, 
to  ignore  our  slowly  clearing  and  strengthening 
sense  of  literature  as  a  great  social  activity  and 
institution. 

This  sense  of  literature  we  have  seen  evolving  by 
gradual  and  chiefly  unconscious  stages  as  successive 
schools  of  criticism  have  perceived  more  clearly  the 
great  factors  in  their  problem.  But  in  a  crude  form 
the  social   conception   of  literature   antedates   all 


38  SOCIAL  CEITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

modern  schools  of  criticism,  since  it  was  specifically 
implied  in  Plato's  much-derided  exclusion  of  the 
poets  from  his  ideal  state,  on  the  ground  that  they 
indulge  the   feelings  and  enfeeble  the  reason  of 

i  man.*^  Literature  is  a  social  institution,  Plato  in 
effect  affirmed,   and  as  such  must  be  judged  by 

.  social  standards.  That  the  nature  and  function  of 
poetry  were  but  imperfectly  understood  by  Plato 
does  not  destroy  the  significance  of  this  early  sug- 
gestion, though  it  has  often  prevented  modern 
critics  from  recognizing  its  significance.  Nor  can 
any  later  restrictions  of  the  principle  to  crudely 
moralistic  ends  destroy  its  wider  validity. 

Mr.  Arthur  Ransome  has  lately  reinterpreted 
the  battle-cry,  "Art  for  Art's  sake,"  which  was 
raised  against  the  domination  of  moralistic  and 
naturalistic  standards  in  art,  into  the  theory  of 
-'  ' '  Art  for  Life 's  sake. ' '  ^  But  the  second  phrase 
merely  substitutes  a  truer,  that  is,  a  more  social, 
conception  of  morality  for  that  implied  in  the 
bourgeois  censure  of  art.  Art  exists  not  for  its 
own  sake,  not  for  the  sake  of  nature,  or  even  for 
the  sake  of  morals, — not,  indeed,  for  any  sake 
smaller  than  that  of  life  itself.  To  heighten  the 
poet's  consciousness  of  life,  and  to  "enrich  the 
blood  of  the  world"  by  offering  to  his  readers 
"opportunities  of  conscious  living,"  Mr.  Ransome 

6  The  Republic,  x, 

7  Portraits  and  Speculations,  p.  1. 


THE  STANDAEDS  OF  CRITICISM  39 

defines  as  the  twofold  function  of  poetry.  And 
this  is  essentially  a  social  function.  The  poet's 
intensified  consciousness  is  transmitted  to  the 
reader,  who  receives  from  it  an  access  of  life, 
whether  in  the  form  of  perception,  emotion,  or 
what-not.  Wherever  this  transfer  takes  place 
society  is  at  that  point  leveled  up  to  the  poet. 
The  poet's  individual  gain  in  perception  or  emo- 
tion has  been  socialized. 

Twenty  years  ago,  Edward  Rowland  Sill,  in  an  '^ 
essay  called  Principles  of  Criticism,  proposed  as  a 
test  for  literature  its  "life-giving  power"  and  fur- 
ther analyzed  this  test,  as  follows: 

It  is  not  enough  that  a  picture  or  a  novel  or 
a  poem  should  move  us :  the  question  is,  What 
does  it  move  in  us?  How  much  of  the  whole 
possible  range  of  our  inner  life  does  it  awaken  ? 
Nor  is  mere  intensity  of  impression  any  suffi- 
cient test.  For  one  must  inquire.  Whither 
does  this  tend, — toward  further  renewal  of 
full  existence,  or  toward  reaction  and  stagna- 
tion? Some  feelings  are  kindled  only  to 
smoulder  away  and  leave  dead  ashes;  .  .  . 
others  tend  to  kindle  on  and  on,  awakening 
thought,  rousing  to  vigorous  action.  Nor  are 
the  most  easily  moved  activities  always  the 
most  important  ones  in  the  effect  of  art  and 
literature.  .  .  .  It  is  the  great  motive  powers 
deep  down  in  the  soul  that  most  contribute  to 


40  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

abounding   life,   and   whose   awakening   most 
surely  proves  the  presence  of  genius.^ 

It  is  unlikely  that  Mr.  Sill  recognized  the  precise 
relation  of  this  suggestion  to  previous  theories  of 
criticism  or  wholly  perceived  its  social  significance. 
But  this  relation  and  this  significance  are  plain  to 
the  reader  of  today.  Perhaps  the  fundamental 
conception  had  been  drawn  from  Matthew  Arnold 's 
Function  of  Criticism  at  the  Present  Time,  which 
in  its  recognition  of  the  critic's  duty  to  "propagate 
the  best  that  is  known  and  thought  in  the  world" 
states  by  implication  the  social  function  of  litera- 
ture. The  critic,  in  Arnold's  theory,  is  the  intel- 
lectual middleman  of  the  social  order,  distributing 
ideas  from  producer  to  consumer;  but  with  the 
ultimate  purpose  of  transforming  the  capable  con- 
sumer into  a  producer.  The  "current  of  true  and 
fresh  ideas"  set  in  motion  by  the  critic  swells  the 
song  of  the  poet,  othermse  mute  in  a  stifling  atmos- 
phere of  practical  life.  From  poet  to  critic,  from 
critic  to  readers,  from  readers  to  new  poets,  passes 
the  divine  afflatus,  in  a  self-perpetuating  cycle. 
And  thus  society  periodically  catches  up  with  its 
leaders,  only  to  cast  forward  in  the  stream  of  its 
OAvn  progress  new  leaders  whom  it  must  overtake. 

Literature,  then,  regarded  from  the  social  point 
of  view,  is  a  primary  means  by  which  the  race 
advances.     The  critic's  function  is  to  further  this 

8  The  Prose  of  E.  S.  Sill,  pp.  161-2. 


THE  STANDARDS  OF  CRITICISM  41 

advance  by  facilitating  the  interaction  of  litera- 
ture with  society.  "Wherever  literature  can  directly 
and  completely  socialize  its  ideas,  it  does  so.  Where 
this  is  difficult,  or  delayed,  the  critic  mediates. 
Having  read  a  book,  in  the  full  meaning  of  the 
term,  having  gained  some  view  of  it  or  some  knowl- 
edge about  it  which  may  conceivably  enrich  the 
reading  of  others,  he  communicates  his  experience 
to  them,  in  order  that  the  writer's  thinking  may 
the  more  completely  interpenetrate  their  minds, 
and  thus  raise  them  to  the  writer's  level. 

Part  of  the  critic's  experience  with  the  book  has 
been  his  judgment  of  it  as  worthy  of  such  com- 
munication, as  in  some  respects  and  in  some  degree 
valuable  to  society.  In  this  sense  he  may  be  said 
to  regard  it  as  ' '  the  best  that  is  kno"s\Ti  and  thought 
in  the  world";  the  best,  that  is,  not  absolutely,  but 
at  this  moment  for  himself  and  for  the  readers  he 
addresses  (who  are  presumably  at  approximately 
his  own  stage  of  development),  the  best  calculated 
to  satisf}^  their  perhaps  unrecognized  needs,  and 
to  carry  them  a  step  beyond  their  present  expe- 
rience or  powers.  If  it  is  too  far  in  advance  of 
them  to  draw  them  to  its  standing-ground,  or  if 
it  is  only  abreast  of  them,  to  say  nothing  of  lagging 
behind,  it  has  no  function  to  perform  for  them  as 
individuals  or  as  members  of  society,  and  it  is  not 
therefore  for  them  the  best,  or  even  good,  litera- 
ture. Good  literature,  as  judged  by  the  social 
standard,   is  that  which  efficiently  performs   the 


42  SOCIAL  CKITICISM  OF  LITERATUEE 

function  of  literature  for  any  individual  or  for  any 
group  of  individuals,  namely,  the  function  of 
making  common  in  society  all  peculiar  advantages 
of  mental  endowment  or  experience. 

Such  a  standard  of  literature  will,  it  is  appar- 
ent, yield  us  no  immutable  five-foot  shelf  of  "the 
best  books."  Nor  is  this,  I  take  it,  what  the  reiter- 
ated demand  in  the  history  of  criticism  for  an 
absolute  standard  of  values  means.  A  book  that 
is  "good  literature"  in  the  social  sense  for  one 
reader  or  for  one  community  may  not  be  good  for 
another.  But  it  is  good  for  each  reader  and  for 
each  community  in  the  degree  in  which  it  furthers 
the  development  of  each  as  part  of  the  social  whole. 
This  means  that,  as  Coleridge  insisted,  the  standard 
by  which  we  judge  the  book  is  inherent  in  the 
book  itself;  but  not,  we  must  remind  ourselves,  in 
the  book  as  a  thing  printed  on  sheets  of  paper  and 
enclosed  between  covers.  The  book,  from  which 
we  are  to  derive  its  own  standard  of  value,  is  the 
book  regarded  as  a  cooperative  activity  of  writer 
and  reader,  to  the  end  of  the  reader's  heightened 
'isocial  consciousness.  In  so  far  as  this  activity  (the 
book)  achieves  its  end  it  is  good  literature.  Like  a 
social  standard  of  value  in  expenditure,  which 
would  affix  one  value  to  opera  tickets  for  a  given 
person  in  a  particular  situation,  and  another  for  a 
different  person  in  a  different  situation,  but  still 
remains  the  same  standard,  the  social  standard  of 
value  in  literature  marks  what  we  roughly  call  the 


THE  STANDARDS  OF  CRITICISM  43 

same  book,  high  for  one  person  at  one  time  or  in 
one  set  of  conditions,  low  for  another  person  at 
another  time  and  in  other  conditions,  while  the 
standard  itself  fluctuates  not  at  all.  In  the  case 
of  the  high  as  of  the  low  estimate,  its  unchanging 
basis  of  judgment  is  the  social  efficiency  of  this  co- 
operative activity  of  writer  and  reader,  whose 
visible  symbol  is  the  printed  book. 

For  the  measurement  of  this  efficiency  no  meth- 
ods have  as  yet  been  suggested,  no  instruments 
devised.  The  social  values  of  literature  cannot  at 
present  be  stated  in  kilograms  or  in  degrees  Fahren- 
heit. But  the  frank  recognition  of  such  values, 
as  legitimate  material  for  critical  judgment,  and 
the  open-minded  investigation  of  them,  must  ulti- 
mately evolve  an  adequate  procedure,  which  shall 
take  account  not  of  one  section  only  of  a  literary 
act,  but  of  the  entire  act,  arising  out  of  a  given 
social  situation,  focusing  itself,  say,  in  a  single 
poem  of  a  single  writer,  communicating  itself  to 
the  mind  of  a  single  reader  in  a  different  social 
situation,  and  thence  throughout  that  social  situa- 
tion, modifying  it  both  in  obvious  and  in  all  but 
imperceptible  ways.  This  view  of  literature  as  a 
living  present  activity,  not  the  product  of  a  past, 
finished  act,  is  essential  to  any  judgment  of  its 
social  value.  And  the  thoroughgoing  acceptance 
of  this  view  means  to  the  criticism  and  to  the 
creation  of  literature  more  than  any  of  us  can 
possibly  imagine. 


44  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

If  the  value  of  literature  is  first  and  last  a  social 
value,  any  writing  which  serves  the  social  ends  of 
literature  must,  in  its  degree,  be  accounted  "good 
literature."  The  realm,  of  good  literature  thus 
ceases  to  be  an  aristocratic  preserve  and  becomes 
coextensive  Avith  all  that  is  really  literature.  Even 
' '  our  trashy,  ephemeral,  modern  writing, ' '  to  which 
the  old-fashioned  critic's  resounding  scorn  would 
deny  all  value,  may,  however  crude  and  unpleasing 
to  him,  have  something  to  offer  those  whose  thought 
and  feeling  are  still  more  elementary. 

But  only  if  it  be  a  sincere  expression  of  the 
writer's  mind.  For  ^vithout  sincerity  no  Avriting 
can  be  good  literature ;  it  cannot,  in  the  social  sense, 
be  literature  at  all, — as  a  counterfeit  banknote  is 
not  really  money.  Literature,  according  to  prem- 
ise, is  the  thinking  or  feeling  together  of  the 
writer  and  the  reader  through  the  agency  of  the 
written  word.  If,  however,  the  word  does  not  con- 
vey the  writer's  real  thought  and  feeling,  the  reader 
cannot  think  and  feel  with  him  by  its  means,  but 
will  simply  entertain  a  thought  or  a  feeling  which 
the  Avriter  for  some  reason  washes  him  to  entertain. 

The  result  of  such  pseudo-communication  is, 
therefore,  not  to  "level  up"  the  reader  with  the 
writer,  but  to  give  the  writer  that  advantage  over 
the  reader  which  his  writing  has,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  sought  to  gain.  The  process  is  as 
distinctly  anti-social  in  its  ends  as  the  process  of 
genuine  communication  is  social.     It  is,  properly 


THE  STAND AEDS  OF  CRITICISM  45 

speaking,  not  literature,  but  a  commercial  substi- 
tute for  it,  which  the  critic  is  bound  to  detect  and 
to  expose. 

Given  the  indispensable  quality  of  sincerity, 
then,  any  writing  may  for  certain  people  at  a  cer- 
tain stage  of  development,  be  good  literature.  As 
to  the  other  rhetorical  virtues,  simplicity,  elegance, 
restraint,  vividness,  force  and  the  rest,  it  cannot 
yet  be  affirmed  in  how  far  any  or  all  of  them  impart 
to  a  book  the  power  of  quickening  and  deepening 
the  reader's  conscious  life.  Doubtless  one  day  we 
shall  have  a  "new  rhetoric"  which  will  attempt  to 
estimate  in  social  terms  the  literary  value  of  these 
qualities.  But  these  have  to  do  with  degrees  of 
excellence,  and  the  social  standard  has  not  yet  been 
applied  beyond  the  first  critical  categories.  For 
the  present  we  must  be  content  merely  to  substi- 
tute for  the  old  personal  distinction  between 
"good"  literature  and  "poor,"  the  new  social  dis- 
tinction, and  to  know  that  degrees  of  excellence 
must  ultimately  be  recognized  on  this  same  basis. 
Since  literature,  though  the  greatest  among  us,  is 
as  one  that  serveth,  it  can  be  measured  only  by 
this  service,  never  by  the  external  signs  of  editions 
de  luxe  or  a  place  "in  every  gentleman's  library." 

This  social  standard  of  criticism  is  the  standard 
for  which  criticism  throughout  its  long  history  has 
been  searching,  and  for  lack  of  which  each  type  of 
criticism  has  been  found  inadequate.  It  is  not  a 
moral  standard,  in  the  narrow  sense  of  the  term; 


46  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

it  is  not  an  aesthetic  standard  in  the  superficial 
sense  of  the  term:  it  is  a  social  standard  in  the 
sense  which  deepens  esthetics  and  extends  moral- 
ity,— a  sense  best  represented,  perhaps,  by  the 
phrase  "Art  for  Life's  sake." 

Such  a  standard  the  criticism  of  two  thousand 
years  has  slowly  fashioned  into  crude  and  but  half- 
apprehended  form.  For  the  criticism  of  the  future 
remains  the  task  of  recognizing  its  uuimagined 
implications,  defining  it  more  clearly,  testing  it  at 
every  point  and  applying  it  to  the  literature  both 
of  the  past  and  of  the  present. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  CRITIC 

No  longer  is  the  critic  regarded  as  an  oracle, 
enunciating  infallible  judgments  of  literature^  by 
an  easy  comparison  of  any  given  book  with  cer- 
tain accredited  models  or  by  an  equally  mechani- 
cal application  to  it  of  rules  delivered  unto  us  by 
Aristotle.  We  know  him  rather  as  a  reader  like 
ourselves,  dealing  with  literature  as  we  all  deal 
with  it,  only  carrying  the  process  somewhat  fur- 
ther. His  dealings  with  it  may  be  infinitely  labori- 
ous and  prolonged,  but  we  are  sure  that  they  can 
be  fruitful  for  himself  and  for  others  only  as  they 
are  rooted  in  genuine  reading  and  tend  to  make 
it  continually  more  intelligent,  more  sensitive, 
more  actively  cooperative  with  the  M^riter. 

The  critic's  reading,  then,  like  that  of  ordinary 
mortals,  must  be  a  process  indefinitely  progressive. 
It  will  continually  arrive  at  valuations  of  particu- 
lar books  and  authors,  but  must  never  regard  these 

1  Mr.  John  Galsworthy,  in  Vague  Thoughts  about  Art, 
plays  ' '  with  a  light  pen ' '  about  this  ancient  superstition 
of  the  infallibility  of  the  critic.  ' '  I  have  not, ' '  he  declares, 
' '  the  firm  soul  of  the  critic.  It  is  not  my  profession  to  know 
things  for  certain,  and  to  make  others  feel  that  certainty. 
On  the  contrary  I  am  often  wrong — a  luxury  no  critic  can 
afford." 


48  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

valuations  as  having,  even  for  the  critic  himself, 
more  than  a  present  validity  and  a  relative  truth. 
His  childish  estimate  of  The  Swiss  Family  Rohin- 
son  probably  differs  widely  from  his  grown-up 
verdict  upon  it.  But  his  second  judgment  is  not 
necessarily  a  truer  judgment  than  the  first,  nor 
the  first  than  the  second.  Each  opinion,  if  indeed 
it  is  not  a  mere  parroting  of  other  people's  ideas, 
but  honestly  his  own,  is  as  "true"  as  the  other — 
and  no  truer ;  since  each  precisely  records  the  value 
of  the  book  to  him  at  a  given  stage  in  his  develop- 
ment. 

Each  opinion  thus  becomes  to  him,  not  a  final 
truth  in  which  to  rest,  but  a  point  of  departure  for 
further  reading  and  criticism.  Any  reader's  ulti- 
mate capacity  to  appreciate  literature  depends  far 
less  on  what  he  may  think  of  a  given  piece  of  writ- 
ing, than  upon  his  really  thinking  something  defi- 
nite about  it ;  for  the  recognition  either  of  a  book 's 
value  or  of  its  lack  of  value  for  him  increases  his 
power  of  reading  the  next  book  intelligently;  and 
this  perpetual  progress  is  essential,  while  one  start- 
ing point  or  another  is  relatively  immaterial.  That 
he  should  reach  a  "right"  conclusion,  so-called, 
about  a  particular  piece  of  literature,  is,  then,  no 
such  weighty  matter  as  previous  criticism  would 
have  us  believe.  Social  criticism  would  insist  only 
that  he  should  honestly  reach  such  a  conclusion 
as  he  can  reach,  and  then  make  each  conclusion  a 
stepping-stone  to  some  further  judgment,  either  of 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  CRITIC  49 

this  book  or  of  another.  Value  thus  inheres,  not 
in  the  judgment  itself,  but  in  the  whole  process  of 
arriving  at  it  and  proceeding  from  it — that  is,  in 
the  vital  and  continuous  contact  with  literature 
which  makes  it  literature  indeed. 

This  continuous  personal  reaction  upon  litera- 
ture, if  supremely  important  for  the  critic,  is  no 
less  essential  to  the  general  reader;  and  the  critic 
can  be  of  real  use  to  such  a  reader,  not  by  saving 
him  all  trouble  of  reading  and  of  thinking  about 
what  he  reads,  but  rather  by  furthering  these  activ- 
ities of  his  in  every  possible  way. 

How  the  critic  should  proceed  to  this  end  is  not 
at  once  evident,  but  it  may  perhaps  appear  more 
clearly  once  we  have  eliminated  the  time-honored 
method  of  imposing  arbitrarily  upon  the  reader  the 
critic's  opinions  about  books.  On  this  point  social 
criticism  finds  itself  widely  at  variance  with  pre- 
vious theories.  For  generations  the  schoolboy  has 
been  taught  that  Paradise  Lost  is  good  literature 
because  all  great  critics  have  so  rated  it.  The 
troublesome  question,  how  we  shall  determine  who 
the  great  critics  are,  by  what  standard  we  are  to 
judge  their  claim  to  decide  these  matters  for  us, 
has  been  placidly  put  aside  by  the  reiterated 
declaration  that,  ''after  all,"  those  best  fitted  to 
fix  values  in  literature  must  do  so  and  every  reader 
must  recognize  the  values  thus  fixed. 

This  is  the  favorite  and  most  persistent  fallacy 
of  criticism,   but  it  is,   none  the  less,   a  fallacy. 


50  SOCIAL  CKITICISM  OF  LITERATUEE 

Holding  the  critic 's  opinions  to  be  obligatory  upon 
other  readers  is  very  like  "fiat  money" — easy  to 
issue  but  sometimes  harder  to  realize  upon.  No 
power  on  earth  can  make  a  book  really  valuable  to 
me  if  it  is  not  so.  Taking  bodily  over  into  my  con- 
sciousness some  critic's  dictum  that  it  is  great 
literature  gives  it  no  fructifying  power  in  my  expe- 
rience. Such  a  dictum  can  serve  me  only  in  so  far 
as  I  use  it  to  challenge  or  to  clarify  my  own  critical 
activity,  which  may  ultimately  lead  me  to  a  con- 
clusion quite  diverse. 

Because  literature  is  nothing  at  all  to  any  indi- 
vidual if  it  does  not  become  his  personal  experience, 
the  criticism  of  literature  cannot,  in  any  sense  or  to 
any  degree,  be  vicarious.  Literary  judgments  are 
as  essentially  individual  as  the  standard  on  which 
these  judgments  are  based  is  universal.  While  it 
is  true  that  a  standard  is  no  standard  if  it  be  not 
universal,  it  is  equally  true  that  a  judgment  is  no 
judgment  unless  it  is  the  culmination  of  an  indi- 
vidual critical  activity. 

If  the  benevolent  authority  of  the  critic  cannot 
legislate  value  for  other  readers  into  the  books 
he  chances  to  prefer,  on  the  same  principle  it  is 
powerless  to  deprive  of  value  all  writings  which  he, 
by  an  individual  or  by  a  class  standard,  must 
grade  as  "poor."  Though  these  writings  may 
have  for  him  and  for  those  who  have  reached  his 
stage  of  development  no  gift  of  more  abounding 
life,  they  are  not  therefore  necessarily  incapable  of 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  CEITIC  51 

bestowing  this  gift  upon  any  other  human  crea- 
ture. From  the  social  point  of  view  a  book  which 
enables  any  person  to  see  even  a  little  more  clearly 
than  he  has  seen,  to  think  more  justly  than  he  has 
thought,  to  feel  more  deeply  than  he  has  felt, 
thereby  demonstrates  its  right  to  exist  and  to  be 
read. 

The  critic's  first  duty  is  no  doubt  to  be  a  good 
reader  and  thus  to  reach  certain  conclusions  as  to 
the  value  for  him  of  the  literature  he  reads.  This 
duty  has  been  abundantly  recognized  by  all  pre- . 
vious  theories  of  criticism.  But  a  new  command- 
ment has  been  given  by  social  criticism,  namely, 
that  the  critic,  having  reached  these  conclusions 
for  himself,  shall  then  hold  them  as  essentially 
tentative  and  personal,  not  only  refusing  stead- 
fastly to  impose  them  upon  other  readers,  but 
giving  no  sanction  to  their  use  by  any  reader  as  a 
substitute  for  his  own  critical  activity.  This  is 
indeed  a  hard  saying,  for  the  critic  as  well  as  for 
the  reader;  and  it  can  be  fulfilled  by  the  critic 
only  as  he  definitely  acknowledges  his  primary  ? 
obligation  to  help,  not  hinder,  the  reading  of  I 
others. 

In  admitting  this  obligation,  however,  the  critic 
by  no  means  abrogates  all  his  powers  and  resigns 
all  his  responsibilities.  As  a  matter  of  fact  he 
gives  up  nothing  that  he  ever  really  had.  The 
critic  who  renounces  every  attempt  to  enforce  his 
judgments  of  literature  upon  other  people  thereby 


■A 


52  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

parts  only  with  the  shadow,  not  with  the  sub- 
stance, of  authority.  Paradise  Lost  never  really 
became  great  literature  to  any  schoolboy,  merely 
because  some  critic  had  asserted  its  claim  to  the 
title.  Such  an  assertion  rnay,  indeed,  help  one  who 
has  never  cared  to  read  the  poem  or  one  who  has 
read  it  without  interest  to  find  some  value  in  it 
for  himself,  but  this  can  happen  only  if,  refusing 
to  accept  the  critic's  dictum  and  to  regard  the  case 
as  by  that  dictum  closed,  he  insists  on  submitting 
it  to  the  test  of  an  active-minded  personal  expe- 
rience. 

To  make  his  expressed  judgments  of  books  thus 
provocative  of  genuine  reading  rather  than  in  any 
degree  a  substitute  for  it  is  the  aim  of  the  modem 
critic.  And  to  incite  to  an  act  of  genuine  reading 
is  a  great  service,  since  such  reading,  as  we  have 
seen,  tends  continually  to  disclose  and  to  supply 
its  own  inadequacies.  But  the  critic  may  offer 
further  aid  in  making  the  reader  more  acutely 
conscious  of  the  defects  in  his  own  reading  and 
of  the  means  of  remedying  these  defects,  by  pre- 
senting before  him  in  the  concrete  form  of  critical 
essays  a  full,  rich,  personal  experience  with  litera- 
ture. 

This  full,  rich,  personal  experience  of  literature 
may  involve  many  distinct  elements — not  only  a 
lively  first-hand  impression  of  what  is  read,  but 
a  patient  accumulation  of  all  the  facts  which  can 
substantiate  or  refine  this  impression,  a  conscious 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  CRITIC  53 

recognition  of  whatever  theories  of  literature  or 
of  particular  types  of  literature  may  be  involved, 
as  well  as  a  tentative  judgment  of  the  book  in 
the  light  of  these  theories.  The  presentation 
to  the  reader  of  any  or  all  of  these  elements 
should  serve  to  stimulate  and  clarify  his  reactions 
to  literature,  should  help  to  make  him  a  better 
reader. 

This,  then,  is  the  peculiar  function  of  criticism, 
apart  from  its  function  as  literature.  Because  the 
critic  is  a  writer,  he  does,  as  Arnold  declared,  act 
as  the  middleman  of  ideas,  disseminating  through- 
out society  "the  best  that  is  known  and  thought 
in  the  world,"  which  might  otherwise  be  inacces- 
sible to  many  people.  He  gives  ideas  publicity, 
makes  them  more  widely  available.  But  this,  it 
must  be  remembered,  is  the  office  of  literature  in 
general,  not  of  criticism  in  particular. 

Arnold's  own  definition  of  poetry  as  a  "criti- 
cism of  life"  seems  to  justify  the  distinction  that 
poetry  (and  thus  perhaps  all  so-called  "creative" 
literature)  deals  with  "life,"  that  is,  with  the 
writer's  experience  outside  of  books,  as  criticism 
deals  with  his  experience  in  the  field  of  literature. 
But  this  distinction  is  not  clean-cut.  The  section 
of  our  experience  which  we  call  books  so  interpene- 
trates the  section  of  our  experience  which  we  call 
"life"  that  a  line  of  demarcation  is  extremely 
difficult  to  draw.  What  the  poet  may  have  read 
infallibly  enters  into  his  poetry,  as  what  the  critic 


54  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

has  known  of  life  at  first  hand  invariably  condi- 
tions his  reaction  to  books. 

The  value  of  Arnold's  definition  perhaps  lies 
rather  in  its  suggestion  of  a  unity  of  process  under- 
lying the  two  apparently  diverse  literary  pro- 
ducts, poetry  and  criticism.  All  literature,  it 
would  seem  to  say,  communicates  the  writer's 
experience  with  something, — a  book,  a  woman,  a 
scientific  observation,  the  death  of  a  dearly  loved 
friend,  a  mountain  peak  at  dawTi,  an  abstract  idea. 
It  gives  us,  if  you  like,  his  "criticism"  of  that 
something,  in  the  sense  that  poetry  is  a  criticism 
of  life.  But  this  is  only  saying,  after  all,  that 
poetry  is  literature,  as  Arnold's  parallel  statement 
that  criticism  distributes  ideas  throughout  the 
social  order  declares  only  that  criticism  is  also  a 
form  of  literature. 

In  so  far,  then,  as  he  is  a  writer,  like  the  novelist 
or  the  poet,  the  critic's  function  is,  no  doubt,  to 
heighten  the  reader's  conscious  life  by  sharing  his 
reactions  with  him.  But  as  peculiarly  a  critic,  his 
function  is  something  more  specific, — namely,  to 
heighten  the  reader's  conscious  life  by  increasing 
his  capacity  to  read. 

And  this  means  that,  in  the  measure  of  his  suc- 
cess, he  makes  literature  count  for  more  in  the 
lives  of  individuals,  hence  for  more  in  the  social 
order.  He  does  not,  in  his  specific  function  as 
critic,  create  the  power  of  literature,  but  only  mul- 
tiplies it,  by  furthering  the  interaction  of  litera- 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  CRITIC  55 

ture  with  society.  He  studies  this  interaction  at 
various  points  as  a  biologist  studies  the  interplay 
of  an  organism  with  its  environment;  and  takes 
what  means  he  can  devise  to  increase  the  efficiency 
of  the  process,  i 

One  importa'nt  means  of  increasing  the  efficiency 
of  literature's  interaction  with  society  is  to  render 
this  interaction  more  intelligent,  better  aware  of 
its  own  ends.  To  promote  in  readers  a  truer  con- 
ception of  what  literature  is  and  does,  thus  becomes 
an  essential  part  of  the  critic's  work.  A  reader 
who  understands  the  place  of  literature  in  the 
social  economy  cannot  relegate  it  to  the  category 
either  of  private  yachts  or  of  ward  politics,  but 
must  definitely  take  account  of  its  relations  to 
himself. 

If  he  chance  to  be  of  the  large  class  which 
prefers  the  current  best  seller  to  Henry  Esynond 
or  The  Egoist,  he  need  no  longer  apologize  for  his 
tastes  to  those  who  regard  them  as  low.  Once  he 
clearly  perceives  the  functional  value  of  any  genu- 
ine act  of  reading,  with  whatsoever  book  it  may  be 
connected,  his  dealing  with  the  literature  he  can 
read  in  this  way  will  cease  to  be  a  somewhat  shame- 
faced playing  with  toys,  and  regain  its  rightful 
dignity,  its  whole-heartedness  and,  consequently, 
its  power  of  development. 

Such  a  reader  will  not  feel  it  necessary  either 
to  pretend  to  share  other  people's  preferences  for 
the  classic  writers  or  to  scorn  these  writers  as 


56  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

' '  high-brow. ' '  Recognizing  the  fact  that  the  great 
literature  of  past  ages,  like  the  popular  writing  of 
the  present,  belongs  to  readers  whose  conscious 
living  it  has  power  to  quicken,  and  to  such  alone, 
he  will  not  overlook  the  equally  important  truth 
that  the  real,  that  is,  the  social,  value  of  literature 
depends  primarily  not  on  what  is  read,  but  on  how 
it  is  read.  He  may  thus  venture  to  respect  his 
own  tastes,  not,  indeed,  as  representing  any  final 
attainment,  but  rather  as  the  record  of  a  constant 
advance  in  his  powers  of  reading;  and  is  thereby 
delivered  both  from  the  false  shame  and  from  the 
false  pride  which  seem  most  effectually  to  bar  this 
advance. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  our  reader  chance  to  be 
of  those  to  whom  the  high  qualities  of  our  classic 
models  are  really  precious,  and  who  hold  the  demo- 
cratic theory  of  literature  responsible  for  the  loss 
of  these  qualities  from  the  popular,  machine-made, 
commercialized  writing  of  the  present  day,  his 
relations  both  to  ancient  and  to  modern  literature 
may  be  rendered  more  intelligent  by  applying  to 
each  the  social  standard  of  values.  Such  an  appli- 
cation should  not  only  increase  his  toleration  for 
the  modern  books  he  may  not  care  to  read,  but 
also  distinguish  for  him  the  legitimately  popular 
from  the  wholly  commercial  writings  in  this  class. 
And  it  will  assuredly  enable  him  to  read  his  ancient 
favorites  with  a  fuller  appreciation,   because   he 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  CRITIC  57 

will  thus  have  gained  a  richer  sense  of  their  actual 
relation  to  the  social  order  of  their  own  time. 

The  censor  of  modern  writing  is  often  inclined 
to  regard  the  critic's  function  at  the  present  time 
as  that  of  holding  aloft  a  stainless  banner  of  per- 
sonal taste  and  dragooning  all  the  world  to  follow 
where  it  leads.  Apparently  such  a  view  fails  to 
recognize  the  issue  as  educational  rather  than 
militant.  The  critic  cannot  coerce.  Books  which 
a  cultivated  taste  considers  deplorable  are  bound 
to  multiply  without  permission  from  him,  so  long 
as  they  are  read.  And  they  must  continue  to  be 
read  while  readers  remain  below  the  level  of  feel- 
ing and  of  thought  which  these  books  represent. 

One  practicable  remedy,  and  only  one,  presents 
itself — the  gradual  education  of  readers  through 
the  very  reading  which  now  interests  and  satisfies 
them.  In  the  genuine  act  of  reading,  we  have  not 
only  a  starting-point,  but  a  continuous  method  of 
education.  For  progress  is  the  law  of  mental  life. 
The  human  mind  is  a  developing  organism :  under 
normal  conditions  it  neither  stands  still  nor  retro- 
grades. Under  such  conditions,  if  the  literature 
adapted  to  further  its  progress  is  at  hand,  it  tends 
to  seize  upon  this  literature  in  preference  to  that 
which  either  fails  to  quicken  or  actually  stultifies 
it. 

This  fact  has  been  repeatedly  observed,  where 
the  experiment  has  been  tried  with  individual 
readers  or  with  a  small  group  of  them,  as  in  settle- 


58  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

ment  classes  and  in  schools.  The  gradual  dis- 
appearance, from  situations  so  conditioned,  of  the 
books  which  are  either  palpably  insincere  or 
notably  crude,  at  least  suggests  the  possibility  of 
making  use  of  a  similar  procedure  as  a  means  of 
destroying  over  a  wider  area  the  demand  for  a 
type  of  literature  which,  though  now  socially 
useful,  could  not  serve  a  more  highly  developed 
society. 

To  bring  into  the  field  of  an  individual  reader's 
attention  at  the  psychological  moment  the  book 
which  will  then  yield  him  most  increase  of  capacity, 
is  not  always  given  to  the  writer-critic ;  but  the 
teacher-critic  finds  this  a  most  important  part  of 
his  office.  So  far  as  experiment  has  been  made 
on  the  point,  a  right  sequence  of  books  seems  to 
be  of  itself  an  incredibly  powerful  agent  in  devel- 
oping the  reading-capacity  of  an  individual.  And 
if,  in  addition  to  this,  teachers  stand  ready  to 
further  the  reading-process  by  every  other  really 
efficient  means,  stimulating  it  by  revealing  some 
of  its  rich  possibilities,  defining  it  by  bringing  to 
light  its  social  function  and  values,  their  students' 
progress  from  stage  to  stage  must  be  even  more 
rapid  and  assured. 

Such  a  conception  of  the  critic's  function  does, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  underlie  our  modern  teaching 
of  literature  in  the  schools.  It  is,  however,  in 
many  cases  so  imperfectly  grasped  and  applied, 
that  books  which  students  cannot  honestly  read  are 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  CRITIC  59 

untimely  forced  upon  them,  thus  sacrificing  the 
development  of  reading-capacity  to  the  mere  form 
of  ' '  doing ' '  such  and  such  writers  or  works ;  while 
the  imposition  of  critical  formulae,  emanating  from 
text-book  or  teacher,  too  often  seems  to  render  un- 
necessary the  pupil's  personal  experience  with  the 
literature  prescribed.  An  abiding  sense  of  what 
the  student's  own  criticism  of  literature  means  to 
him,  however  crude  and  unsatisfactory  it  may  be 
to  others,  and  of  the  teacher's  primary  obligation 
to  further  his  vital  contact  with  any  literature  that 
can  carry  him  a  step  beyond  his  present  capacity, 
would  serve  to  redeem  English  teaching  from 
formality  and  barrenness,  while  developing  a  gen- 
eration of  readers  who  are  bound  to  demand  books 
on  a  constantly  rising  level  of  intelligence  and 
taste. 

The  critic  as  teacher  virtually  chooses  those 
whom  he  will  teach  by  the  progress  he  himself  has 
made.  And  the  critic  as  writer  (whose  office 
is  equally,  though  less  avowedly,  preceptorial) 
chooses  his  readers  by  the  same  means.  Those 
whose  capacity  to  experience  literature  is  fuller 
or  finer  than  his  will  not  care  to  listen  to  what  he 
has  to  say ;  while  those  whose  capacity  is  far  below 
his  cannot  grasp  it.  Only  those  approximately, 
but  not  quite,  at  his  owti  level,  can  he  serve. 

Having  taken  a  step  or  two  in  advance  of  these, 
he  constantly  labors  to  close  the  gap  between  them 
by  drawing  the  reader  up  to  him.    And  so  soon  as 


60  SOCIAL  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE 

he  has  done  so,  he  must  move  beyond  their  common 
position,  or  the  reader  can  no  longer  advance 
through  him,  but  must  find  another  helper. 

To  each  reader,  then,  his  own  critic,  and  this 
critic  often  for  only  a  limited  period  in  his  devel- 
opment. For  the  function  of  the  critic  is  no  empty 
honor,  but  a  genuine  utility,  serving  the  sole  end 
of  the  reader's  limitless  progress. 

The  terms  writer  and  teacher  by  no  means  cover 
all  possible  phases  of  the  critic's  social  activity. 
This  activity  may  be  carried  on  in  an  English  class- 
room or  on  a  lecture-platform;  its  results  may  be 
published  in  a  popular  magazine  or  in  a  learned 
review;  it  may  take  the  form  of  club-work  at  a 
social  settlement  or  of  a  dramatic  experiment  such 
as  Professor  George  P.  Baker's  "Workshop";  it 
may  involve  copying  manuscripts  in  the  British 
Museum  or  taking  down,  as  Professor  John  A. 
Lomax  has  done,  the  songs  of  cowboys  on  the  Texas 
plains;  but  in  all  these  and  in  many  other  guises, 
it  seeks  always  the  same  end,  namely,  to  further 
the  activity  of  literature  as  an  agent  of  social 
progress.  And  it  reaches  this  end  always  by  one 
means, — by  applying  to  every  concrete  problem 
presented  to  it  the  principle  that  literature  is  not 
alone  a  creature  but  also  a  creator  of  the  society  it 
serves. 


T"TTT -■^■jjQ^rrv 


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